Moonfall (2022)

Mercifully skipping the usual disaster-movie preamble of ignored scientists and warnings spilling from dot matrix printers, Moonfall gets to collapsing cities and lunar chaos within minutes, but its brisk, comic-book style only makes it slightly less exhausting than it would otherwise be.

★★☆☆☆

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

This Marvel superhero series distinguishes itself from all the other Marvel superhero series with its catalogue of immature characters exhibiting only the basest of functions, so the space-adventuring troupe of GotG number 1 and 2 continue to do 1s and 2s in this number 3, and like Groot's one note repeated ad nauseum (*i am Groot"), we see these base character-identifiers over and over again over two hours, and it is tiring - adults like me might like to daydream about more interesting things like what is behind the movie's central thesis, expounded gently but repeatedly, that, "Good dog," is better than, "Bad!"

★★★☆☆

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Dune (1984)

This 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's dense and difficult 800-page read was at one point ten to fourteen hours of footage that over the course of director David Lynch's famously difficult production, was pared down to just two, and the result is laughable, with glib voiceovers bridging those lost hours on the cutting-room floor and mere sentences attempting to confer importance on too many details - too many feudal empires and ruling families warring over a precious resource on the planet Arrakis - but nonetheless the movie succeeds as a psychedelic rock opera full of fantastic SFX (a floating bloated villain, gleaming hyper-blue eyes, gigantic earthworms, yellow upside-down lightning) all set to a Toto-and-Brian Eno soundtrack, a heady, mind-numbing treat bringing to mind the camp excess and pulp spectacle of Flash Gordon - for better or worse.

★★★☆☆

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Coherence (2013)

The kooky premise - those gathered at a dinner party start to experience mindbending things as a comet passes overhead - will certainly keep you watching but as the high concepts snowball and near, well, incoherence, this ambitious low-budget film stays indoors and stays focused on the more easily, more cheaply captured domestic goings-on among the party guests (one of them Nicholas Brendan of Buffy fame) - so glowsticks, boxes, rings, numbers on photos, and bottles of wine become the preoccupation while the more interesting space- and time-warping things happening outside are, well, left in the dark. 

★★★☆☆

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Ad Astra (2019)

Baby Astronaut goes to a great deal of trouble to reconnect with long-lost Papa Astronaut, not only embarking on an epic trip with multiple transfers, lengthy stopovers and terrible inflight service but also making the effort to narrate his tribulations apparently aware that an audience somewhere is watching him, and while it is all spectacularly filmed and suitably measured and mesmeric for a deep space film, a middle section features clunky, lurching plot progression and the emotion, when it comes, barely registers.

★★★☆☆

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